Skip to comments.Site Provides Evidence For Ancient Comet Explosion (Topper - SC)
Posted on 10/07/2007 10:07:52 PM PDT by blam
Site provides evidence for ancient comet explosion
JOEY HOLLEMAN; McClatchy Newspapers Published: October 7th, 2007 01:00 AM
COLUMBIA, S.C. For the second time in less than a decade, a South Carolina river bluff holds evidence pointing to a theory with history-rewriting potential. Microscopic soil particles from the Topper site near Allendale might hold a tiny key to a big theory: that comet-caused explosions wiped out the mammoths and mastodons, prompted the last ice age and decimated the first human culture in North America about 12,900 years ago.
The comet theory first began generating a buzz at an international meeting of geophysicists in Mexico in May. The findings were published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Theyre about to go mainstream, with a National Geographic Channel segment today. The History Channel will film for a future show at Topper this week.
People are fascinated by it, said Allen West, an Arizona geophysicist and one of the leaders of the comet team, whos speaking Wednesday at USC. It has diamonds and giant elephants and Indians. Any new catastrophe theory that comes along gets plenty of attention.
The new theory holds that a comet broke apart in the atmosphere above what is now eastern North America, producing explosions and wildfires as the pieces smashed into the surface.
Scientists, led by Richard Firestone of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., took soil samples from throughout North America and in Belgium. In a layer dating to about 12,900 years ago, they found high levels of iridium, nanodiamonds and glasslike carbon that could have been caused by a comet explosion and subsequent fires.
The Topper site, on the Savannah River, provided compelling evidence, in part because of earlier findings by Al Goodyear of the S.C. Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at USC.
Goodyear drew international attention in 2004 when stone points found at Topper that apparently were sharpened by humans (Clovis points) were carbon dated to nearly 50,000 years ago. That put human beings in North America thousands of years earlier than thought. For generations, scientists have thought the first humans arrived 13,000 years ago via a land bridge from Asia.
Goodyears work at Topper, along with similar finds in Brazil and Chile, prompted scientific reconsideration of when humans arrived in North America. It also led to skepticism by scientists who didnt buy Goodyears theory. In that regard, he found kindred spirits in the comet group.
This is a pretty wild theory, Goodyear said with a chuckle. Im glad Im not doing this one.
He welcomed West to dig at Topper. At the same depth as Toppers undeniable Clovis artifacts, West found high concentrations of iridium, nanodiamonds and glasslike carbon.
Wests findings prompted Goodyear to do his own study on the disappearance of Clovis points. These stone tools are found throughout North America only in soil dating back about 13,000 years or more.
Not long after that, a different style of points began showing up from people scientists have dubbed the Redstone culture.
Goodyears recent study found there were four times as many Clovis points as Redstone points at similar sites. That would indicate a huge population drop from the Clovis to Redstone cultures, possibly caused by some natural catastrophe.
Ping to you.
Good article. Thanks.
Am I the only one to notice “Goodyear” and “Firestone” here ?
Hot damn! Things are FINALLY shaking up paleontology. Maybe things like Skull Cave in Calaveras, CA and the taiga remains in Alaska and Siberia will finally get a look at.
I do California archaeology.
Tell me about Skull Cave, and why it should be looked at again.
You mean the Hardy Boys had it wrong??
Seriously, what is Skull Cave? That article from Archaeology about syphilis being a New World mutation of yaws was an eye-opener; I'm beginning to develop some interest in archaeology, after too many years of ignoring it.
In February 1866, workers found a human skull deep in a mine in Calaveras County, California, believed at first to be of Pliocene age. It was passed through several hands before reaching J. D. Whitney, State Geologist of California and Professor of Geology at Harvard University.
While some scientists accepted it on face value, other scientists and the public press refused to believe it and even ridiculed the claim. Some believed it was a "plant," while others had faith in the reports of the miners, which led to a long controversy.
Apparently two skulls became confused in transmission from one person to another, but in the end they were identified as fossilized Indian skulls of modern type, and it was finally admitted that the one taken from the mine was "planted" as a joke.
The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes:
Flood, Fire, and Famine
in the History of Civilization
by Richard Firestone,
Allen West, and
Thanks Blam and ConservativeMind.
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You probably have more firsthand knowledge than me, but my understanding about Skull Cave is that there are geological depositions there that are about as old as the original Bering Strait hypothesis, about 10,000 yrs. before present. From what I’ve heard, it seems to resemble mass depositions of prehistoric creatures in other areas that seem to have been caused by some type of catastrophic event.
Duh, maybe I should have stated that there seem to be many human remains of comparable age as the depositions. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a full examination of the cave.
For buried treasure! Maybe that's where Long John Silver hid his loot.
“wiped out the mammoths and mastodons, prompted the last ice age and decimated the first human culture in North America about 12,900 years ago.”
an aspect of this I haven’t seen spelled out in any arcticle is the implication that the paleo-indians were able to expand without any traces of other cultures/genetics being assimilated because the preceding cultures were dead or otherwise severely depleted, numbers-wise.
In fact the theorized event may have enabled paleo-indian expansion in the first place.
That thin black mat is identical in looks to what I see on the sides of many of the older roads here in Missouri, where they cut into the sides of hills.
I have a feeling that this ‘mat’ is likely predominant across the entire northern continent of America.
Just look at the artificial cliffs where hillsides have been cut along the roads you travel, and I bet you’ll see them as well.
Thanks for the info. I’m sure that there’s traces of this in California, where I am. This will be pretty awe-inspiring if/when somebody maps it.
You mean something like this:
"The oldest human remains found in the Americas were recently "discovered" in the storeroom of Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology. Found in central Mexico in 1959, the five skulls were radiocarbon dated by a team of researchers from the United Kingdom and Mexico and found to be 13,000 years old. They pre-date the Clovis culture by a couple thousand years, adding to the growing evidence against the Clovis-first model for the first peopling of the Americas."
"Of additional significance is the shape of the skulls, which are described as long and narrow, very unlike those of modern Native Americans.
Yup...I was 'holding-out' for Michelin.
A connection? Or are we overdue for the next 6,000 year hit?
Blam I have seen posted in one place or another reports from the late 1700s to early 1800’s from explorers in Siberia and Alaska. They told of finding huge pile of ancient bones. They didn’t know what kind of bones they were but the enormity of the deposits were such as to make them think something truely catestrophic caused them all to die at once.
Have you seen those articles.
...highly permineralized human bones found embedded in the travertine rock of Calaveras County caves--once thought to be of Pliocene age and later estimated to be 12,000 years old--are, on present evidence, no more than 3000 to 4000 years old. ...
The most controversial discovery was the "Calaveras skull," a partial cranium found in 1866 at a depth of 40 m in a mine shaft penetrating Eocene gravels and lava beds on Bald Hill near Angels Camp, Calaveras County. The bones were fossilized and heavily encrusted with calcareous material, supporting the notion of great antiquity. The appelation of "Auriferous Gravel Man" persisted through 4 decades, until Ales Hrdlicka showed conclusively that the Calaveras skull was that of a recent Indian, and Sinclair discredited the story of its discovery.
In 1880 the respected geologist J. D. Whitney published a report culminating a long study of Sierran gold-bearing strata as related to Early Man. Whitney admitted the Calaveras skull, oral testimony from miners, and affidavits from "expert witnesses" as evidence that the remains of humans and extinct fauna were coeval with Tertiary gravels. Artifacts often identical to those made by historic Indians, reportedly found in auriferous deposits, were taken to support Whitney's belief that little or no cultural change had occurred in California since Pliocene times.
Reaction to Whitney's case for "Eocene Man" tended to be negative. Critical reviews by Holmes and Sinclair exposed the problems of using testimony and the like as scientific evidence; they offered no support for the idea of Tertiary archaeology. Nonetheless, Whitney's contentions and the reactions to them were important milestones. As Warren has observed, they mark the emergence of California archaeology [references omitted].
There is He3 in extraterrestrial buckyballs for those who think going to the moon for He3 is reason enough for going to the moon.
Nope, Here's one I got a chuckle out of that I had overlooked until I went back and reread some posts:
Yup, I mislabeled the pdf file with the wrong tire maker; it should be Firestone et al. (2007), not Goodyear.
The event was WORLDWIDE?
Yikes, it looks like we are getting hit fairly frequently by these earth shaking things.
"There is sufficient evidence, he says, to indicate that collisions happen within centuries and millenniums rather than millions and billions of years, with multiple encounters more likely than sceptics claim."
Don't recall those.
Does anyone think this may be related:
Didn’t mention my theory of avalanche followed by climate change. There have been herds of animals apparently buried in snowstorms and then frozen for subsequent millennium. Bones of the larger, mature animals have been found piled underneath bones of the lighter young animals. Snow, at least many tens of feet deep, seems a good explanation.
Have you even read the pages connected to the link, or did you just read the first and then make your own conclusion? I stopped somewhere around the 65th e-page, and what I read had nothing to do with an avalance. It had quite a bit more to do with ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ and your near futeur.
What, you don’t think my theory is plausible? I said I hadn’t seen it mentioned, as you have also found.
In the article, most of the instances of suffocated, crushed, animals happened in the wide open plains of Arctic Circle.
From the organic matter in the soil in which it lies. All that shows, though, is the time when it arrived at that location. Not an exact science by any means.